Composition V is a color lithograph from 1970 by the Spanish artist, Manuel Bea Cervera. It is pencil signed MBEA in the lower right and dated over the signature. It was printed on ivory wove paper with the V. Piera watermark. Composition V is editioned 50/50 and the image measures 17-1/4 x 23-3/4 inches.
Manuel Bea Cervera worked in painting, collage, engraving, lithography, and sculpture. His imagery often began within figuration and evolved towards abstraction and was further informed by magic surrealism. Though little recognized outside of Spain, Cervera was a major figure in twentieth century abstract figuration.
Manuel Bea Cervera, printmaker, painter, sculptor, and illustrator, was born in Barcelona, Spain on 19 March 1934. His various aliases include Monolo Bea, Manuel Bea, and Manuel Cervera Bea. Cervera briefly attended the Barcelona School of Arts and Crafts and he began working in an illustration workshop at the age of fourteen, creating illustrations for various publications. Formal art training began in 1958 when he moved to Zurich and enrolled at the Kunstgebeweschulle. It was there that Cervera was introduced to printmaking.
Cervera participated in his first exhibition at Galeria Haller in Zurich in
1960; two years later he returned to Spain and settled in Castell d’Aro where
he would eventually have four studios over a thirty-five-year period of time.
His work was greatly influenced by the German Expressionists, Max Ernst, Jean
Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier. By the late 1960s Cervera labeled his art Abstract
Figuration, and he expanded his exhibitions to include Germany and
Belgium. Among his selected exhibitions were the VII May Salon in Barcelona (1963); the XX Biennial of Sao Paolo; and the International Art Salon, Basel
(1970). The retrospective, Manuel Bea:
Paintings, Drawings, Objects, was held February 4 - April 9, 1995, at the
Cultureel Centrum Hasselt in Belgium. His work is held in the collections of
the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid; the Museum des Landes Glarus in
Näfels, Switzerland; and the Museums of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Bilbao,
Seville, and Valencia.
Manuel Bea Cervera died in Switzerland in 1997.
